Moonlight and the Mirror

Excerpt

Moonlight and the Mirror
Evelynn Carver © 2026
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

Brand’s palms began to sweat as he stared at the faded scrap of paper in his hands. He’d studied his mother’s drawing a thousand times, traced every line, memorized every curve. Now, standing at the foot of the hill with the sun hot on his back and salt in the air, he beheld the real thing at last. Though not entirely accurate, the rendering was close enough to be undeniable, depicting the shape of the archways, the number of pillars, the elegant curves of the capped roofs, shining in the balmy sunlight—all of it as she had sketched out many years ago. Though not a palace, not quite, it seemed near enough. It stood like something out of a storybook, a beautiful, shining star overlooking the bustling marketplace below, all hidden in the center of a tropical paradise surrounded by the ruins of war.

Brand stood staring at the house on the hill for a long time from under the shade of a mango tree, his stomach heavy as if filled with stones.

He likely had relatives in that house. Extremely likely. But how could he face them? He couldn’t exactly waltz up to the front door and knock. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong anywhere.

Blending into the marketplace came easily enough. Unlike the streets back home, the markets teemed with all sorts, flush with colors and smells and shouting between shopkeepers and haggling customers. Food was all around him: spices and sweets, fresh fruit and vegetables overflowing from stalls and baskets, pans of oil frying this or that in the muggy afternoon heat. Teahouses lined every other block, full of old men arguing over cards and dice, children laughing, and musicians playing instruments he had never seen, much less heard before. Magic drifted through it all, the small, everyday kind of boiling kettles, mending socks, and growing things. Nothing about it resembled the tidy farming villages in Felidereaux or the stinking, labyrinthine alleys back in Kaenys.

Dengaluru thrived—a loud and lively, beautifully bustling society built on the ruins of an ancient way of life that had nearly been erased, but instead burst forth, vibrant and stubborn, from between the cracks.

Brand should feel at home here. No one gave him a second glance as he fetched letters and delivered discreet packages or went about any of the various chores and tasks to earn his keep. Brand, unlike Valentino, blended in easily, his warm brown skin and dark hair much like most of the populace on the island. This land belonged to his mother, after all.

He could only speak a few sentences of the language fluently though, the rest a broken garbled mess of Dengalese and the Queen’s Common they spoke on the mainland where he’d been born and raised. His father had forbidden his mother to speak her native tongue to her children. Though Brand knew a few of her songs, he didn’t know their full meaning. He couldn’t carry on a proper conversation with the people here without giving himself away as an outsider, and if someone got a bit too close, caught his eyes in the right light, terror clawed up his spine that they might see a tyrant staring back at them. Sometimes as he passed a mirror, he caught his reflection and found his father scowling from the glass instead. Would the people here know what the king across the ocean looked like? Brand didn’t want to find out. He didn’t want to catch too much attention, not after everything he had done.

What would his grandparents think of him? His mother had rarely ever spoken of them, terrified of inciting her husband’s wrath. Could they still be alive? And if so, would they want to meet the son of the monster who had taken their precious daughter away, the power-hungry king who had tried to drain this beautiful island dry? With every moonrise, Brand grew more and more afraid of becoming more like him.

After his bond with Valentino last winter, the curse had…changed. Something inside him had shifted, the mixing of magic altering the contract written in his blood, but unfortunately not curing. Not breaking.

He needed to get back to the inn, back to Valentino’s side, and he needed to do it soon. Being apart had taken a toll. Even now in the warm tropical afternoon, the cold magic of the curse swam right under his skin, slinking about and waiting to be set free, gnawing at him. The comforting warmth of Valentino’s magic lay half an island away, and without it, the demon grew ravenous.

The damn thing had plagued Brand his entire life, but just a season ago, he’d been barely aware of the creature’s presence in flashes and fever dreams, the bulk of it only surging forth completely once every full moon. Now, it dogged him relentlessly, always lurking, waiting, biding its time, itching at the back of his skull every day and night. Valentino, with his supernova surplus of power, certainly helped to soothe the itch, but that presented another problem entirely. Brand worried more and more about becoming a drain on their partnership, and the guilt and fear weighed heavily on his heart. Did hungry shadows torment his father the same way, consuming him from the inside out? Had he eaten all his wife’s magic away through their bond, until she slowly lost her mind as well?

The sound of a carriage approaching up the road startled Brand out of his reverie, and he stepped back to let it pass.

But instead of a single carriage, a caravan of them came around the bend, the ones in front and back carrying a group of men in striking black uniforms, sashed in red. The center carriage, large and splendid, had a tasseled canopy shading its solitary rider from the sun. When they passed, Brand caught a glimpse of the occupant’s profile—an elegant, elderly woman draped in finery, gold chains and bangles dripping from her ears, nose, and neck. Something about her struck him as startlingly familiar, and for a moment he could only gape.

Brand stared after her as the final carriage passed, nerves jangling, and then he stepped out and followed them, calling out.

“Pardon me, my lady!” He prayed he used passible Dengalese. “May I have a word?”

One guard shouted at him, turning on his horse and pointing a spear in Brand’s direction.

Brand held up his hands. “I just want to talk with the lady for a moment, please. I mean no harm.”

Another guard joined the first one, and they converged on him.

Sweating, Brand turned to run, but another shout stopped him as the lady herself spoke loudly and sternly to her driver, and the carriage stopped.

Brand took the chance. “My lady! My lady, I apologize for interrupting your travels, but—”

The guards yelled at him again, so Brand yelled louder.

“Lady Al’Uldahl. It’s about your daughter—your daughter, Deepika. I’m her—”

One of the guards hit Brand in the stomach with the butt of his spear, and he fell to the ground with a grunt, the air knocked out of him.

Another sharp word from the lady made the guards pause as she stepped down from her carriage and approached, pushing between them.

Gasping, Brand squinted up at her.

The lady frowned down at him with a dark, unreadable gaze, staring for nearly a full minute, taking in every feature, finally settling on his eyes. Her expression did not change, no light of recognition or a raised eyebrow, but when she spoke again, she did so precisely, as if for his benefit.

“Bring him with us. Now.”

Instead of to a dungeon, the guards ushered Brand into the estate’s courtyard. There, they indicated a plush cushion and told him to wait.

Brand blinked in the sunlight, squinting at his surroundings. The house, more awe-inducing up close, had pale white stone walls, gleaming with elaborate designs cut into them, and ceiling and floor tiles inlaid with chips of colorful glass. He sat, enchanted, in this beautiful stained-glass confection, flanked with tropical trees and gently gurgling fountains. All of it, so jarringly different from his father’s dusty old castle, made him wonder how his mother had ever been convinced to leave this place, royal marriage or not. He pondered this in silence, the guards watching him dutifully from the nearby doorway.

Not more than a quarter hour later, the grand lady joined him, her jewelry and finery gone except for a single shining stud in her nose and a pleated fall of gold-embroidered cloth draped over her shoulder, stark against the rich green of her dress. She wore her long hair parted at the center and gathered severely in a thick gray coil at her nape. Brand found the style rather unnervingly reminiscent of a cobra preparing to strike.

She did not speak as a maid served them tea from a steaming pot and then hurried away, leaving them alone except for another pair of guards standing several yards away near the fountain.

Lady Al’Uldahl took a sip of her tea and regarded him coolly through the fragrant steam.

“You are my grandson, I take it?” She spoke with a crisp and elegant accent, a combination of the lyrical bounce of her native tongue and his own unaffected Common from the continent.

Brand’s heart beat wildly in his chest. “Yes, I think so, my lady. My name is Brand. Brandahl Lykanos. I’m the son of Queen Deepika Al’Uldahl a Lykanos. Your daughter?”

She nodded and took a drink. “You’re the one that killed him, then? My son-in-law, the scoundrel who called himself a king.”

Brand swallowed. News traveled fast. This pretty courtyard, filled with plush pillows, fountains, and guards with spears, made a strange space for a murder confession. But when he gazed into her eyes, Brand knew he could not lie to her. He’d grown so sick of lying.

“Yes, that’s right.”

She took another sip of her tea. “How did you do it?”

Brand had expected at least a gasp or a frown, but her expression remained placid, as if discussing the weather.

“How, my lady?”

“You heard me, boy. Do not spare the details.”

A year ago, his father had transformed into a demon in broad daylight in the middle of the castle chapel. He’d flown into a wild rage, and Brand and Valentino had put him down. The image of the creature’s lifeless form, bloody and smoking in the middle of the chapel aisle, remained etched into the back of Brand’s eyelids. He flexed his hands, recalling the way the sword had vibrated as it scraped against his father’s spine. Brand did not regret it for one moment, not after he learned what his father had done to his mother, what he had hoped to do to Brand himself, what he tried to do to Valentino there between the rows of pews. Still, the image haunted him, mocking him from an ocean away.

His grandmother waited for an answer. Her eyes remained hard and emotionless, but as Brand stared at her, he noticed a barely perceptible sharpness that hadn’t been there before. He suddenly understood and did not hesitate any longer.

“I used a sword. Ran him through the back, my lady. We opened his throat, too, and burned him.”

Valentino had done that last bit, of course, but it brought Brand instant relief, confessing to the bare, honest truth.

Lady Al’Uldahl set her teacup on the small table between them and dabbed her lips with a napkin. When she finally smiled, her even, white teeth gleamed like a crescent moon on a dark, clear night. “Very good. Now, what can I do for you, dear boy?”

*

Despite her stoic demeanor, his grandmother, Raniya Devora Al’Uldahl (or Naani, as he’d been instructed to call her, though he didn’t dare), appeared to be glad to see him. She commended him for what he had done. She spoke of Brand’s mother as if she were simply somewhere off in the house napping, half-convincing Brand that she might appear at any moment, looking as she had the last time he’d seen her before her death over ten years ago.

The loss connected them, threads of grief, invisible but spider-silk-strong. When Brand showed his grandmother the drawing from his mother’s sketchbook, her statuesque façade finally cracked. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, and she didn’t speak for several minutes, her fingers trailing over the pencil lines as if trying to memorize them.

“Mother wasn’t able to tell me much of her home,” Brand said. “But I always treasured what she did.”

“Oh, yes, I am sure your father didn’t want you to learn your true heritage. He never cared for the island at all, except for what he could take from it. We’ve only just begun to get back on our feet after throwing out all those bloody guns along with the riffraff.”

She said all of this with poise and an almost vexing calmness, speaking of one of the centuries’ bloodiest revolutions as if discussing a particularly vexing sporting match.

Brand didn’t want to spoil the mood, but a question burned inside him, simmering ever since he stepped foot on the island three moons past. In fact, it had niggled at the back of his mind since the day of his mother’s funeral. He took a deep breath and set down his teacup.

“Why didn’t you come when Mother died?”

It came out more as an accusation than he’d meant, but he couldn’t take it back now, even if it remained a pale shadow of the real question that lurked beneath it all.

Why did you leave us with him?

His grandmother blinked, her brow furrowing ever so slightly.

“I wondered when you would rally the courage to ask,” she said softly. “I am afraid I do not have a tidy answer for you. Only that I did not feel I’d have been able to interfere without causing an international incident.”

“So you were afraid of him too?”

“Of course, child. The man was a monster.”

Brand grimaced, dropping his eyes. “You have no idea.”

“I had some. But yes, I was afraid of him. I was a coward,” his grandmother continued. “The island was in chaos at the time—the height of the liberation front. Our people fought tooth and nail for their freedom. We won, of course, though not without a cost. My husband, your grandfather, was lost.”

Brand wrung his hands together, unsure of what to say. “That’s…terrible.”

His grandmother grimaced. “Yes. Yes, it was. Even so, I should have come for you. Fought for you. Ripped out your father’s throat myself. For you and your sister.”

Brand’s breath caught in his chest. The guilt he’d carried—guilt over his father’s death, guilt over how little he knew of his family, guilt over the pain he’d caused and endured—surged up, threatening to drown him.

“I knew the kind of man he was,” his grandmother continued, her voice weary now, another wobble of emotion breaking free. “But I let him have my only daughter. I let him have you.”

The words hit Brand hard, and bitterness flooded his mouth. The silence stretched between them, full to the brim with years of missed opportunities.

He met her clear gaze with his own finally. “We needed you.”

Her calmness fractured then, her lips trembling, her eyes going glassy and wet. A moment of hesitation passed before she spoke again.

“I know. I failed you, my boy. You and your sister both. And for that, I am deeply, terribly sorry.”

Brand’s chest tightened, his heart a tangled mess of emotions he didn’t know how to sort. Her regret didn’t make up for the years of abandonment, but as she sat there facing him, her pain palpable, he couldn’t hate her. He could not blame her.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry too.”

A faint hint of amusement spread onto her lips. “Whatever for, dear boy?”

“I don’t know. Everything? I wish I could have done something myself. Done something sooner, I mean.” He’d only fought back against his father in the heat of the moment, hadn’t done anything to save his mother all those years ago, though he knew she was hurting and alone. He, too, had abandoned his sister to deal with the responsibility of the crown all on her own. The haze of guilt had followed him his entire life, all the way across the ocean as he ran away yet again. Maybe Brand had more in common with this stately, stoic woman than he thought. Coward.

His grandmother’s sudden laughter startled him, and Brand nearly dropped his teacup.

“Men always think they can solve everything with good intentions,” she said. “Do you think you could have changed Dengaluru’s plight? Saved your mother? You were barely out of swaddling clothes when the revolt began and, what, ten years of age when she died? Your mother did what she could, sending secrets across the sea through our spies. You and your sister remained her only joy, the only light in her world for those years, as your father, the brute, locked her away to rot in that tower. And what could we do, hundreds of miles away with the royal fleet of ships lined with cannons between us? We fought here, where we could, took back what was ours, but we lost so much. It was too late for Deepika the moment she took the hand of that man and sailed to foreign shores.” His grandmother sighed again and shook her head as if trying to brush off the memory. “But she knew her fate. She saw the future in her visions. You knew that didn’t you?”

That took him aback. “I knew she had strange dreams. She spoke of them often, wrote things down in her books. I’m afraid they didn’t make much sense. I…I didn’t believe her.”

His grandmother picked up her teacup. “Neither did I. I thought the poor girl had gone weak in the head. But my dear husband, your grandfather, believed her. Oracles run in his line, you see.”

Brand sat back. “Oracles?”

She nodded. “Yes. A person through whom the Goddess speaks her will. He thought our daughter’s dreams were divine messages. She had dreams of a powerful union between magics, the sun and the moon coming together. I thought she was just a girl talking nonsense, but when people are without hope, they will cling to scraps. Word spread. People began to arrive, asking for her blessings at our front door. Eventually, your father came knocking.”

“And you didn’t turn him away?”

“Turn away a king? How could we? He had a battalion of soldiers armed to the teeth, pointing cannons and swords at our front door and rifles at the back. At first, I thought he had come to kill her for her insolence, for giving our people a bit of hope. When he saw her though…”

A faint scowl formed at the corner of her mouth.

“What?” Brand prompted. “What is it?”

She closed her eyes. “For a moment, I thought he might have fallen in love with her.”

Brand swallowed. He thought of the beautiful wedding portrait his father had painted, hidden away back home in that room under the library, the sketches and poems moldering in the dank, terrifying place.

“Maybe he did love her, at first,” he said begrudgingly.

For as long as Brand could remember, his father had treated his mother with indifference at best and outright cruelty at worst. If he ever loved her, that love became twisted beyond recognition over the years.

“Unfortunate,” his grandmother said softly, the understatement of the century.

What had caused that change? Had something happened between his mother and father? Perhaps the birth of Brand and his sister? Or maybe an effect of the curse? A trickle of fear rose to the surface again, the cold hunger writhing under his skin.

His grandmother watched him closely with that careful, ever-present calm. But when he met her gaze again, her eyes softened ever so slightly. “You’ve been through so much, my boy. I am so very glad you’ve come home.”

The darkness creeping up on him flowed away, replaced with an unfamiliar but not unpleasant sensation of relief and mild confusion. Did he have the right to call this place home, this beautiful estate, this island, this stately woman in front of him? Optimism surged in Brand, and he smiled back at her, full of gratitude and terrible, aching hope.

“Thank you.”

She reached over and gently patted him on the hand, but something behind him drew her attention, her gaze turning to the main house. The soft clicks of heels proceeding along the path approached them.

“Ah, so you’ve finally decided to join us, then?” his grandmother asked brightly.

Brand turned and saw someone he had never expected to see again.